March 11th and 13th – Student Presentations

Today and Tuesday students were presenting their final projects on the Aztecs. I was very excited to see what they had created and also how they would go about presenting their information. In this class period, I first went over the presentation rubric (all of the criteria of a 4) to remind students of the expectation for their presentation. I also allowed the students about ten minutes to practice their pronunciation with a partner while other students asked me questions. Allotting students ten minutes of time to practice allowed me to talk to students who were absent and did not have their final projects. When the students were ready to present, everyone in the audience actively listened and were expected to give positive feedback when the presenter had finished. Allowing students in the audience to give positive feedback to the presenter created a safe and positive learning environment where all students felt accepted. I was overall very impressed to see what the students did with this project. Some students really played out their role as a reporter form the 21st century and spoke to the audience as if it were really filled with Aztecs. I was impressed to see that many students empathized with the Aztecs, saying “I am sorry to tell you but…” showing a high level of respect toward the Aztecs. I was also extremely impressed with the level of understanding that all of the presenters showed. I was happy to see that many of the students went above and beyond my expectation, adding many extra vocabulary words in Spanish. Every presenter did a great job is some aspect, and succeeded in this project because of the research that was done. I was impressed to see my students’ language skills as well. There was a handful who told additional information (that was not required) about themselves in the target language. Overall I was very impressed. It felt really good to see the level of excitement of the students, the level of respect for their peers and the Aztecs as well. I am so proud of them and their success! I feel that my students’ success is also my success. After reading some feedback from the students, I feel that I have certainly accomplished one of my main objectives for the class, to excite students about a foreign language. I was very sad to say goodbye to these student who have made my first student teaching placement a pleasure. I would love to thank them dearly form making the experience a positive one!

March 6th Review of Research

Today students were asked to bring their completed research graphic organizer to class. I allowed the students to work on this ditto with a partner for the first 15 minutes of class. The reason I allowed student this time to work with a partner was to strengthen their research by sharing ideas with a partner. I was happy that I allowed student to work during this time for this cleared up misconceptions that some of students had. As a future teacher, I am aware that in many activities I will act as the facilitator, and not the teacher who is the “know all”. I do not want to constantly be dictating what is correct or incorrect, nor do the students want to hear this. I am aware that peer editing helps students immensely. It is also helpful that struggling students are supported by their peers, and not just the teacher. I was happy to hear the conversation that was going on during this “peer research review”. Once students showed me that they were ready to talk about their findings, I directed the class to a full class discussion about what they had found. I encouraged everyone to actively listen, for they may hear something that interests them or information that they had not included that they could add to their own research. I was very excited to see the turnout on the research that the students had done and very impressed to see the level of conversation. I observed that students were connecting their own culture and typical Mexican culture to the Aztec’s culture. The level of conversation showed me that the students had worked hard researching, writing about information that interested them. This activity gave me confidence that students were ready to do their final project, the newsletter to the Aztecs. The project was passed out in class today. I asked for volunteers to read the project expectations and guidelines and also checked for understanding of these guidelines through student explanation (in their own words). I assured student that they were more than capable to achieve a four on this project and encouraged them to continue researching at home. I offered students without computer access to come during lunch and homeroom times to work on their projects. Allowing students this support allows every student to succeed.

March 3rd and 4th – Library Day

On these two days I had reserved the library to allow the students to work independently on researching for a future project. I provided students with a graphic organizer which included websites on both the Aztecs and Mexico and questions relating to the unit on the Aztecs. I was not completely happy with one of the sites that I had provided the students, for it had come up differently on many computers in the library. I told the students not to worry, for they could find the information needed on the other sites provided. I observed how many of my students are “technological natives” and enjoyed being able to work on the computer. I was happy to see the amount of work many students got done during the class period; navigating around the websites was not a problem for these students. I told the students that their self-directed grades for the day would depend on their behavior and work completion. I controlled this by putting a dot next to the names of the students who were off task, who were not many. Once I informed these students that their grade will be affected by the amount of work the complete, the students took the research for the projects very seriously. I had a set of rules in the library; one, of course was to respect the equipment in the library and the other was to not stray away from the sites that I had provided them. I was very happy to see that all of my students obeyed these rules which also helped them achive their goal of gathering information for their final project on the Aztecs.